City could resurrect Lake Wyman project after no vote

Nobody expected the last-minute no vote, but when City Council rejected the $2.9 million Lake Wyman Restoration Project 4-1, it didn't mean those plans are dead forever.

"It's not what we expected, but DERM will put the project on hold. As far as city property goes, we would have to change direction," said Dan Bates, deputy director of Palm Beach County's Department of Environmental Resources Management.

"If the city changes direction and asks us to reconsider and funding again becomes available, we would pursue it. The FIND piece is up to FIND," Bates said about the Florida Inland Navigation District, the third partner with the city and county on the proposed project.

More importantly for children who play sports in Rutherford and Lake Wyman parks, that could still mean enough fill to elevate their fields to prevent continued flooding.

"If FIND wants to go ahead, we will work with them to take fill off the island and create the sea grass area," Bates said. "It would help them out and be advantageous. We would probably give it to them [the city]. They would need to spread it around and put it in place. We wouldn't charge them for it."

Mark Crosley, assistant executive director of FIND, had the same reaction to council's move. "We thought it was a good project and maybe the city wants to discuss another way to approach it," he said. "They will have to re-evaluate what to do next. It's nothing imperative at this moment.

"It was a time-clock ticking for a grant the county had with us. But there's no timeline with our own capital improvement funds," he added.

At the last minute June 26, City Council voted against providing the final $191,000 local share of a project that would have added boardwalks, a watch platform and day docks at Lake Wyman Park and unplug the city's overgrown kayak and canal pathways. Only Councilman Mike Mullaugh felt satisfied all the issues had been addressed and voted yes.

Deputy Mayor Susan Haynie talked about her "lack of a comfort level and lack of cooperation by FIND."

"What troubled me, it's not in our control," said Mayor Susan Whelchel. "I would rather be in control if we're going to spend close to $200,000 on water recreation."

The other half of the local share, up to $225,000, was already committed by the Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District at the city's request. Earlier the same day, the district waived one of six conditions in what would have been an agreement with the city, allowing the money to change hands and the project to go forward.

But in the end, not matching the money didn't matter to the district. "This was not a budgeted item and we would have taken it out of our reserves," said Bob Langford, "Our commission was prepared to put it up, but we got to save it instead."

Whether or not FIND would go ahead with plans to submerge 4 acres of land for sea grass wasn't clear the day after council voted. But that was one objection by Christine Cherepy, president of the Golden Harbour homeowners association. She continually asked council for an independent study of long-range impacts from the project. "This is an example of looking before leaping," she said via email.

"You can't undo submerged land," she said after the meeting. "There were too many unknowns."

County Commissioner and former Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams backed the project and had the strongest reaction to the turn of events. "The City Council complains all the time that Boca Raton is a donor city and does not get back more tax dollars…than it sends up," Abrams said by email. "I was more disappointed as a resident of Boca Raton…that the city would turn down millions of dollars for an environmental restoration project and to open the canoe trails when this project had been studied for a year."

Steve Reiss, a Golden Harbour resident, also led the fight against proceeding with the project, going so far to have a petition signed and hire land use attorney Robert Harstell, who wrote a letter to the mayor and spoke at the council meeting. "I'm proud of City Council saying they didn't want to rush into this. They listened," Reiss said after the meeting.

The district's chairman agreed and welcomed another look. "What City Council did was to the best of their ability get it right," said Commissioner Earl Starkoff. "I'm thrilled to keep this open as a viable project, and even Golden Harbour said there were things they liked about it. If this comes before us again, we will look at what's presented to us at the time."